See the light

“Speak now.” The man in the white coat pushed his glasses up and looked at Jenny with intense focus.

“What would you like me to say?” she asked. Well, those were the words her brain formed, but her vocal chords delivered a harsh, wet grunting noise. Wide-eyed, she clapped both hands over her mouth. Her chest heaved as she sucked air in through flared nostrils.

“Feel free to try again.”

Appalled at the thought of repeating that ugly sound, she shook her head.

“Okay. I understand,” he replied with a small nod. He left her glass corner office, closed the door, and locked it from the outside. She heard him murmur something to the CEO. Unable to be still, she paced the room with a heavy, shambling gait and every person in the call centre watched. Even those agents talking on calls couldn’t take their eyes off her, and she felt like an ape in a zoo. The stiletto heels on her Jimmy Choo’s snapped off and the resulting backward momentum caused her to land on her arse with a resounding thump. There was an uncertain titter from her staff, and it mortified her that they were embarrassed on her behalf. She pulled off the broken shoes and threw them at the wall. They bounced off the toughened windows and landed back in her lap.

She sat there, on her office floor, in her designer skirt suit, and let out a horrific moaning sound. The office maintenance worker, who was papering the walls with black paper, stopped to shield his ears with his hands. Ashamed, Jenny remained silent until he’d finished the job. Then, relieved to be hidden from prying eyes, she maneuvered onto all fours before reaching up to grasp the desk and pull herself up. She lurched over to the now black wall and stared at her reflection. Her ordinarily slick bob was disheveled, but once she’d smoothed this down with clumsy hands, only her shoeless, tight-clad feet looked out of place. But when she walked, the glass reflected a grotesque, inhuman figure. Zombie, she thought. I’m a fucking zombie.

She was just another statistic in the zombie pandemic sweeping the corporate world. She’d watched the videos of dead-eyed shambling executives and assumed their intellectual capacity had diminished with their physical degradation. But here she was, still reasoning and feeling sorry for herself. She wasn’t sure if this mental sharpness would last, or if she’d gradually lose herself. She wasn’t sure which scenario to wish for.

The sun set over her spectacular view of the city. God, how she’d craved this office when it was populated by her boss. Clarissa had plucked Jenny from the call centre floor, mentored her through the business, and promoted her through the ranks. She warned her to be wary of her co-owner.

“Be careful around Bob,” she said. “He treats people like playthings.”

But perhaps Clarrisa was being defensive. According to Bob, she was weak, and once he’d pointed it out, her tolerance of poor staff performance irritated Jenny. All the encouragement in the world wasn’t going to make people recognise and face into their limitations.

“You get it, Jenny,” Bob said, and she glowed with pleasure. “You can do the tough stuff.”

Seduced by his praise, Jenny increasingly did the tough stuff despite Clarissa’s warnings to take it easy with colleagues. 

“She’s holding us back,” said Bob.

It was easy for Jenny to collect sufficient information about real and fake misdemeanors to blackmail Clarrisa into selling her shares cheap. So Bob Bonnington became the sole owner and CEO of Lucina.

“I’m glad to get out,” confided her ex-boss as she vacated the corner office. She turned back as Jenny was trying out her chair for size. “Be careful, Jenny.”

As chief cultural officer, Jenny preached Bob’s harsh brand of tear them down to build them up management techniques through every level of the organisation. To help people, you had to reduce them to broken, egoless wrecks and then mould them to follow Bob’s will. Jenny was evangelical on this process, which, when successful, allowed people to see the light. Anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t be enlightened was passed to her for disposal. She’d lost count of the people, high and low, that she’d maneuvered out of the company.

A section of the black paper had become loose, allowing her to observe the late-night, sparsely populated call centre floor. The phones were quiet, so the skeleton crew chatted and joked together. Their electronic performance badges displayed more unhappy than happy faces, but the workshy employees wore real-life smiles as they mucked about. Before, she’d have given them the famous Jenny glare until, grim-faced, they would repurpose their idle time to engage in virtual coaching. In this way, Lucina would remind them, in a tailored fashion, what a piece of shit they were as they dangled the elusive light just out of reach.

Jenny shuffled over to the window, shielded her eyes, and peered through. She opened her mouth, licked her lips, and let out a moan of pure longing. There were exposed arms, faces, and throats, and all at once, she realised she was ravenous. The rational side of her brain was appalled, but the instinct to feast was stronger. 

This hunger for human flesh was problematic and forced most families to donate their zombies to either spiritual or scientific research. In a miracle of simultaneous discovery, both camps announced that zombies, through what they lacked, proved the existence of the soul. In a weird synchronicity between science and religion, they agreed that the urge to consume people was a tragic and misguided attempt to absorb the essence of innocents.

When the last shift finished, the staff and their delicious flesh left for the evening. Jenny sighed alone in her office, which was a beacon of light in the dark of the empty call centre. She wanted out, but didn’t relish any of her possible fates. Her future was not in her husband’s hands as they’d divorced because of her slavish devotion to the cult of Bob Bonnington.

“I don’t know you anymore. You treat that bastard like a god and everyone else like crap,” he’d said as he walked out. He’d have donated her to science, but her next of kin was now her bat shit crazy religious mother. So, she was destined to become one of god’s mutants. She wondered how Bob would hush this up without her, his fixer, there to do the dirty work.

A figure dressed in a hazmat suit entered the office and Jenny backed into the corner. The person held up their hands as if to reassure her, but terrified of her fate, she cowered further into the wall.

“Jenny,” he said, and she knew it was Bob. He must have had a microphone in the suit, as his voice projected from the phone he held in his gloved hands. She closed her mouth tight. She didn’t want to grunt at him.

“So, you’ve lost your soul.” She pictured her soul shrinking each day until it became a bullet hard sphere that she’d coughed up while on a zoom call. Jenny had considered swallowing it, but it’d melted in her hand and security had locked her up like a prisoner.  

“You stared too hard into the light,” he added with a chuckle. “Sometimes I’d make you do terrible things just to see if you’d agree. I couldn’t believe you sacked that woman who took time off for her daughter’s cancer operation.” Jenny clapped a hand tight over her mouth 

“Then there was the guy you tormented to the point of mental breakdown.”

A tear of regret ran down Jenny’s cheek. What a sorry piece of crap she’d been.

“You were my creature.”

A guttural noise escaped her.

In an exaggerated action, Bob covered his ears.

“Anyway, I’m going to keep you.”

She shook her head and didn’t even try to suppress her wail of despair.

“I’m getting my basement at home ready.”

Recently, there had been reports of partial cures. Fledgling souls sprouted from the small kernel of humanity buried deep in the repentant undead. That wouldn’t happen in this maniac’s basement.

“In the interim. I thought you might be peckish.” There was a knock at the door, and Bob sauntered across to it.

“Come in, come in,” he said and ushered in a young woman. She clocked Bob’s suit and tried to bolt, but he caught her and wrapped his arms around her small body. He muffled her scream with a gloved hand forced tight against her face.

“All yours” He held her out towards Jenny.The girl’s chest heaved in her vest stop and Jenny gazed at the bare flesh of her shoulders, biceps, and vulnerable neck. She watched blood pump below the skin, and although she’d never tasted human meat, she knew only it could satiate her hollow hunger. Open-mouthed, she stepped towards the girl.

Bob’s soft laughter sounded from the phone, which now lay on her desk. Unwilling to give that bastard the satisfaction, she stopped. She swallowed the saliva formed at the thought of ripping through warm flesh and stared at Bob with defiance. Surprised, he loosened his grip, and the girl took advantage. She elbowed her captor in the stomach, spun around, and kneed him hard in the balls. Clutching his privates, Bob fell howling to the ground, and the girl backed out of the office.

“Catch her,” he ordered.

“Fuck off,” replied Jenny. It sounded rough, but she’d formed real words. She tried again. “Just fuck right off.” That was clearer. She walked to the door with a pace that was slow and careful, but it wasn’t an uncoordinated lurch. On exiting, she turned the key and, employing the fingers on her left hand, she lifted a single middle finger on her right and held this up. Bob banged on the glass door, and she grinned at him until, exhausted, he gave up and sat on the desk. She retrieved her phone from her pocket and, with concentration, dialed the number for her ex. She had to tell him she was no longer one of Bob’s faithful.